o de Mendoza, Marquis de Mondejar, Captain-General of the
Kingdom of Granada, to collect money and to have men ready in the ports of
Andalusia. He gave orders for eight thousand German soldiers to hold
themselves in readiness; these were to be joined by the veterans of Coron
and Naples, which body counted four thousand more; in Italy he also raised
another eight thousand men. All this was done under the seal of secrecy,
which the Emperor most peremptorily ordered was to be observed.

But news travelled in the first half of the sixteenth century, although
newspapers, war correspondents, and telegraphs were not; when all the
feudatories of the greatest king in Christendom were busy it was impossible
for the matter to remain hidden. Even had it been within the range of
possibility to conceal what was going on there was one circumstance which
would have rendered all effort to this end nugatory. Charles had invited
Francis of France to join in this holy war against the scourge of
Christendom: not only did Francis refuse to join, but he had the incredible
baseness to betray the scheme to Barbarossa. It would be pleasanter to
think that some mistake had been made in this matter, but unfortunately it
is beyond dispute, as the facts have been placed on record by Sandoval,
whose history, it must be remembered, was published in 1614. In this matter
he is quite precise, as he states that a "Clerigo Francese," one Monsieur
de Floreta, was sent with despatches from Francis to Barbarossa at Tunis,
and that this treacherous envoy from Christendom gave the corsair king all
the available information that he had been able to collect before starting.

This was typical of that "Golden Age of the Renaissance" in which it took
place; when real devotion to all arts, sciences, and amenities of a higher
civilisation went hand in hand with crime of the vilest and treachery of
the basest description. Well might Barbarossa, and such as he, laugh to
scorn the pretension that his Christian enemies were one whit better than
were they, when they could point to the fact that, to serve a private
revenge, a great Christian king could betray his co-religionists to their
Moslem foes. Shamelessly did the Sea-wolves seek their prey wherever it was
to be found; their methods were villanous and seemingly without excuse,
but, after all, there was some colour, some shadow of right in what they
did, for their argument was that they were merely getting back from
Chr